Both Sides Now_2025_Loy Luo Space_NY

Both Sides Now

2025.3.7 – 4.3

Loy Luo Space — New York

Chronicle Note

Both Sides Now took the dual viewing condition created by the street-facing corner windows of Loy Luo Space as its conceptual point of departure.

The exhibition also reactivated CaveMan (2023). Monumental paintings originally presented in a museum setting in Beijing were reinstalled in the much smaller, street-facing space of Loy Luo Space in New York, whose gallery-height ceiling transformed the cave from a philosophical metaphor into a direct psychological experience.

This was the first exhibition in which Loy Luo treated her artist-run space as artistic material. It also initiated the three consecutive solo exhibitions that followed, each further exploring the exhibition itself as an artistic medium.

Installation View

About

Loy Luo’s latest solo exhibition "Both Sides Now" takes its name from the classic

Joni Mitchell song, and reflects a sentiment that perfectly encapsulates both the visual structure of the show and the essence of the artist’s creative philosophy. Luo explores the inherent duality within human nature- one side rough, the other delicate; one side sorrowful, the other hopeful; one side kind, the other indifferent. Just like life itself, existence is a balance of contradictions: light and shadow, generosity and ruthlessness.

For this exhibition, Luo presents large-scale multimedia works that transform the gallery

into an immersive, enclosed space. A deliberate “peep window” design invites viewers

to look inward from the outside and outward from within, symbolizing the interplay

between personal introspection and external perception.

"Both Sides Now" is also part of Luo’s ongoing "Form Theater" series at Loy Luo Space- a

project dedicated to pushing the boundaries of materiality and form. The exhibition

highlights Luo’s deep fascination with texture—an element the artist sees as a tangible

manifestation of life’s passage. As Luo explains, while the meaning of life remains

abstract and elusive, the textures shaped by time and matter are concrete, real, and

deeply moving. (John Mazlish & Leslie Herman)

Exhibition Details:

Loy Luo Space, 101 Lafayette St., NYC, 10013